By default the forecast will be refreshed approximately every thirty minutes. You can always force a refresh by clicking the refresh button at the bottom right. Hovering over the icons in the forecast area will show a brief descriptions of the forecast, whilst clicking on the current weather icon or the credit link at the bottom of the desklet will take you to a more detailed forecast for your area.

Configuration

Right click on the desklet and select 'Configure...' to enter the configuration screen.

Select the service you wish to use to provide weather data. Note that some services require you to obtain an API key by registering with them.

The Location must be specified as a code and these codes are specific to the service that you are using. Below are notes on each of the services supported.

BBC

To find your location code visit the BBC Weather site and search for your city. The code you need is the numeric part at the end of URL for the city's weather. For example, a search for London takes you to:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2643743

The Location code is therefore 2643743.

Open Weather Map

Visit the Open Weather Map and search for your city. The code you need is the numeric part at the end of URL for the city's weather. For example, a search for Chicago takes you to:

http://openweathermap.org/city/4887398

The Location code is therefore 4887398.

You can also give a latitude and longitude. These should be decimals, separated by a comma, with positive being north or east. For example, for central London, 51.51N, 0.13W, use 51.51,-0.13.

Yahoo

Unfortunately Yahoo! is no longer supported because of an incompatible change to the Yahoo! API

Visit Yahoo! Weather and search for your city. The code you need is the numeric part at the end of URL for the city's weather. For example, a search for Berlin takes you to:

http://weather.yahoo.com/deutschland/bundesland-berlin/berlin-638242/

The Location code is therefore 638242.

You can also give a latitude and longitude. These should be decimals, separated by a comma, with positive being north or east. For example, for central London, 51.51N, 0.13W, use 51.51,-0.13.

Weather Underground

Weather Underground requires an API key. You can obtain a free developer API key here. Weather Desklet uses the 10 day forecast data, so you will need to get at least the Cumulus Plan.

There are several ways to specify the location for Weather Underground. For locations in the USA you can simply use a zip code. You can also give a latitude and longitude. These should be decimals, separated by a comma, with positive being north or east. For example, for central London, 51.51N, 0.13W, use 51.51,-0.13.

You can also specify locations as Country/City, eg France/Paris, or within the USA as State/City, eg TX/Houston. You should check that your proposed location works by visiting the website, eg

http://www.wunderground.com/q/France/Paris

If you search for your city on wunderground.com and are taken to URL of this form:

http://www.wunderground.com/q/zmw:00000.16.03541

use the section following the q, eg zmw:00000.16.03541. If you are taken to a URL with a station ID such as:

http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/03541.html

you can convert this to a zmw code by taking the station number (03541 in this case) and prefixing it with zmw:00000.1. to give zmw:00000.1.03541

World Weather Online

Locations can be specified as a US zipcode, a UK or Canadian post code, or as a latitude and longitude. Latitude and longitude should be given as decimals, separated by a comma, with positive being north or east. For example, for central London, 51.51N, 0.13W, use 51.51,-0.13.

Forecast.io

Locations must be specified as a latitude and longitude. Latitude and longitude should be given as decimals, separated by a comma, with positive being north or east. For example, for central London, 51.51N, 0.13W, use 51.51,-0.13.

meteoblue

Locations must be specified as a latitude and longitude. Latitude and longitude should be given as decimals, separated by a comma, with positive being north or east. For example, for central London, 51.51N, 0.13W, use 51.51,-0.13.

Refresh time

Select the period between refreshing forecasts. The default of 30 minutes should be adequate for most purposes. Please consider the impact of lower refresh times on the service provider's servers and do not use lower refresh periods unless you have a very good reason. In order to comply with the terms of use of some providers Weather Desklet will override low settings in some cases and enforce a minimum.

Location display settings

These settings allow you to use an alternative source for text displayed for the location. They are particularly useful for those whose language is not English.

By default the text is provided by the weather data service. If the service does not provide translations of city names, using names provided by Yahoo! or Google may do so. As a last resort you can manually enter a city name.

Experimental and buggy settings

These are settings that should be used with caution.

Anchor desklet by

This setting allows you change the point on the desklet that is anchored. This point remains fixed as the desklet grows or shrinks. It is useful if you wish to place the desklet close to a screen edge. By default the desklet is anchored to the top left corner, so for example, if you place the desklet in the bottom right of your screen a long weather text may cause it to grow beyond the edge of the screen. By anchoring to the bottom right of the desklet this problem is avoided

However, Cinnamon's drag and drop functionality for desklets does not cope with a change of anchors. You will find drag and drop behaves oddly if you use this option and you will probably have difficulty positioning the desklet just where you want it. I recommend that when dragging and dropping you always grab the desklet by the top left corner. It's still weird, but slightly less so!

Other settings

Most of the other settings should be obvious - just experiment. Please note, however, that not all services support all settings. For example, some support only a limited number of days of forecast, or do not support humidity or pressure. If you change the configuration and the display doesn't seem to change, it's probably because the service you have selected does not support the new options. See the list of service capabilities for details.

Here's a screen shot

Using your own icons

There are details of how to use your own icons in the Weather Desklet on the project wiki, or in the README file in the icons/user directory of the Weather Desklet's installation directory. A number of example configuration files are available in the extra directory.

Language support

The Weather Desklet provides partial support for languages other than English. The messages displayed by the Weather Desklet come from two different sources

Text descriptions of weather forecasts and current conditions are provided directly by the data service being used

Labels (eg 'Humidity', 'Pressure'), units, and all text in the settings dialogue come from translation files shipped with the Desklet

Data service provided translations

Some data services provide translations of their weather data. Where these are available in one of the preferred languages configured for your desktop, they will be used. The following services support translations. Click on the link to find out which languages are supported:

Note that although forecasts are translated, names of localities may not be. In this case you may wish to look at the Location display settings.

Internal translations

The Weather Desklet supports translation of most of the internal messages, and some forecast messages from services that do not support translated forecasts themselves. We have a small but growing number of translations contributed by users. If you are a native speaker of a language that we don't yet have a translation for, why not help out? Find out more about translating the Weather Desklet.